No idea is dangerous. Many ideas offend power. It always turns out that the ideas which are illegal, because they are dangerous, are the ideas which offend power. But since power is powerful, to offend it is not to endanger it. Nothing can endanger it.

Therefore, when in the spirit of glasnost we state these ideas, we have a special duty not to state them as if they threatened power—for truth is not treason. Glasnost is the right to express any idea—and the duty to express it in the coziest, most harmless way. Actually, when you suggest that your idea is dangerous—you are a collaborator, for this is exactly the official thinking of the regime.

There is no information war. If there was, it is over. The regime won. It always does. The end of war is peace; and in peacetime, no idea is a bullet. When I have ideas that remind me of the bullets of the late war, I go out of my way not to cast them in brass. In particular, I never advocate anything at all.

This is the spirit and strategy of glasnost: not one of tension, but of relaxation. We are entering the peacetime of ideas. But how can we have peace, when some d00d stole Nancy Pelosi’s podium? Surely Belzec is just around the next bend in the tracks… the peacetime of ideas is when nothing matters. We cannot avoid this fate; it is already here.

Do we dare even hope for peace at this point?

Many ideas do offend power. No ideas threaten the powerful—because the powerful, having power, have nothing to worry about. The closest ideas to being dangerous are ideas that the strong should abuse the weak. Power can do nothing about these ideas, because by definition the strong have power.

Globocop do-gooder-ism is essentially the rationalized form of that which is currently en vogue. It is for precisely this reason I am skeptical any party involved even wants peace, save for us cranks. Nevertheless, the path to peace (perestroika) is discussed:

Certainly the easiest way to turn a bottom-up, unaccountable organization into a top-down one is to fire the former and hire the latter. This is not always the best way, but it is often the best way. It is especially likely to be the best way after a prolonged period of unaccountability. If it’s not an option—perestroika isn’t real.

It's funny. For years my grandma has said "we need a dictator" and she's not wrong. At this point there's no alternative way to cut out the cancer.

Perestroika cannot work, and cannot even happen, as a way for one side in America’s class war to dominate the other. It can only happen as a peace measure. Its purpose is to end the cold war by installing an authority that is dedicated to serving all classes. This can only happen if both sides consent to giving up their real or apparent power.

One of the most deeply-held beliefs of Americans is that unless they hold power, they will be oppressed. This is like a cokehead believing that unless he has cocaine, he will be depressed. While it is not evidence of reasonable thinking, nor is it necessarily untrue. And our thinker can marshal plenty of empirical experience to make his case.

Yet another reason I am skeptical of the prospects for peace; we aren't even close to the level of "rock bottom" misery these power junkies would have to experience to even think about throwing the ring into Mount Doom.

If both sides of the public mind can realize that their quarrel is the consequence of a political structure that gives each of them a good reason to fear each other; that they have little or no substantive conflict; and that they have the same principal interest, an effective and accountable government that treats all groups and classes fairly—they have at least the abstract basis for a mutual and stable peace.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Yeah, sure. Keep dreamin'. Peace is not the goal, but failure in the public's mind. We're far from 100% war exhaustion yet.

It does matter which side the perestroika comes from. But it doesn’t matter a lot. While Trump’s CEO has a huge wave of anti-elite sentiment at his back, he has another huge wave of elite resistance in front of him. Our elites are not violent, of course—but they can still be a quite pain.

Biden’s CEO is more like Gorbachev—since he is a legitimate figure, the sea is calm before and behind him. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. You might object that he’s a lib. It doesn’t matter—the job creates the man. Lee Kuan Yew was a lib. While the lib inherently has more to learn, what he learns is inherently fresher and more thorough.

I can very much agree with this part. It's funny that the libs themselves jawboned about "transparency" back in the Obama era. Of course without accountability, it's just brazenness but it was at least an acknowledgement that something is very wrong with the administrative state coming from the elites themselves.

Which I think is the only way this can work. The elites themselves have to realize this is not working and decide to do something about it. Can the auto-glasnost strategy actually pull this off? Time will tell.

Given Mordor has stripped the country to the bare bones, it's not shocking they wish to resort to piracy.

Their talking points are pretty much spot on (regarding the current crooks in Berlin):

These pigs are nothing other than marionettes of the victorious powers of the Second World War, whose task it is to keep down the German people.

That said, it sounds like scamming (as with libertarianism here) is rife in nonmainstream politics over there too. That said, it's still less of a scam than voting and thinking taxes actually help any citizen, lol. This is what I always emphasize -- if normal politics weren't an obvious criminal conspiracy, hardly anyone would fall for the absolute nonsense out there in the alternative media. "Alternative Medicine" wouldn't exist if mainstream medicine worked.

As always, James Corbett has his head screwed on straight and isn't habeebin' the LIES

Linked in Yarvin's piece below, and good on it's own merits. I'm so happy pieces like this are coming out of the right finally.

Yarvin with an important essay:

You can be a Republican. The Republican Party, including its deranged fringes all the way to the “alt-right,” contains a complete spectrum from pure fraud to pure fascism. Corruption, betrayal and perversion are observed across this spectrum. Ultimately, the Republican Party is a party of losers; and to support it is to be a loser. When you give it ideas, they are either fake ideas for helping its officials defraud its voters, or real ideas for building fascism in America.

You can be a Democrat. The Democratic Party, including its deranged fringes all the way to “antifa,” contains a complete spectrum from pure bureaucracy to pure sadism. Corruption, sycophancy and perversion are observed across this spectrum. Ultimately, the Democratic Party is a criminal organization; and to support it is to be a criminal. And since it is the ruling party, unless you oppose it, you support it.

And “third parties” are even worse. And people ask me why I don’t like democracy!

Spot on with all points there.

Of Texas’ power generators that were not operational during the storm, Magness said the freeze was responsible 42% of the failures. A lack of fuel and equipment damage unrelated to the weather also contributed, but Magness said that for 38% of the plant outages, the problem remains unclear.

Just in time inventory + price control shortages = plants off for no reason.

Why did they adopt this clearly lunatic strategy of JIT inventory? Because they know contract law is toothless against them, and they'll never pay the price for violating their SLAs.

On bitcoin and our current financial situation.

Essentially what's going on with all political activism at a high level. It's 1000% corrupt grifting from bottom to top.

Gib new plane plox. Self licking ice cream cone

I had a feeling the vTuber future being brought to everyone was closer than anyone imagined.

All talking heads and pols will now be Eliza Kassan and John Henry Eden henceforth.

Given the inventor has been sidelined, one suspects they were extraordinary flops.

Good enough for government work

Hype is the fundamentals (for all currencies!). I figured out things were a game of musical chairs pump and dump when I realized this grew out of the 07-08 gold speculations. It's the same pyramid scheme as back then (which is why gold has never retraced it's old gains).

Lulz, people actually thought this would work?

Every rationalist is a disappointed lover. The rationalist becomes a rationalist because he has one simple dream: he wants the world to be ruled by reason. This dream always lets him down and always will.

It’s easy to fault the rationalists for the semiotic arrogance of their self-selected label. As if no one in history had ever thought of being rational! This is uber cringe.

These clowns always have no conception of the sins/virtues and how they just so happen to line up on emotion/reason. It's always the same old fight by the clueless.

The disappointed lover keeps being disappointed. And he keeps coming back: like the dolphin, he enjoys his rest in motion. The dissident is trying to get out of Plato’s cave. The rationalist is trying to furnish it. Tough when the trees are so drippy, and the sun is so weak—the upholstery gets moldy so fast…

Late in any empire, there is an air of dismal futility to all these efforts at reform. Since talking about what should be done is a pastime, a profession, a pretense that will never cease before they stop having Super Bowls, the discourse continues. Everyone really knows the real answer: nothing can be done. Nothing will be done.

Doubly so because the woke BS is just a right wing conspiracy conning them into not paying attention to the wars and the vortex of corruption.

Seems they started playing ball and joined "team Persia haters"

Remember: every phone has a black box.

Klein's core thesis is that it's all because the Dixiecrats flipped R in the 70s, and the answer is to disenfranchise the republicans forever.

Of course, being in the Yank matrix, SSC can't see what's staring himself in the face, even though he has a hint by alluding to WTF happened in 1971?

The reality is that the dixiecrats wouldn't have made their devils' bargain with the party of lincoln had the Yanks not decided to just print money to the moon so that they could do literally everything they wanted and ignore all others. Yanno, kinda like the yanks did back during reconstruction.

It really is that simple to fix the country. Just stop believing Yank lies. Or, wait until they blow up in their faces again.

SSC thinks prediction markets are the answer we need for Full Communism Now(TM). He fails to realize it will fail for the same reason; participants optimize for success. You get more of what you reward, less of what you punish.

NO SNITCHIN'

When you realize the implications for crypto you'll be more bullish than you ever thought possible

Sounds about right

Some serious bread and circus action right there. Yearly costs are almost as bad as our current yearly war costs. Since we can't even afford the wars "as-is", all this means is more inflation and debt (accelerating the time table for bankruptcy or hyperinflation).